This is an old abandoned factory in Taunton, MA. Used to be an American silver capital, not anymore. I walked around the facility a while. It's in bad shape and has defiantly been well l lived in since it closed. The inside "may" have been awesome. There was a bunch of cool stuff. I choose this shot because I like the bird. Cannon t2i 18-55mm, f/7.1, 1/640, iso 800.

- Chris Thomas

Story behind image:
I missed the lunch time crowd (would've been great). A composite image was my next best option. I used a slow shutter to 'fill' up the shot. Composited with 8 images.
Shot taken in Raffles Place, Central Business District, Singapore.

This is a shot of the downtown area of Jinju, a small city in the South of South Korea. I Went up to the 9th floor of the local department store, Galleria, which has a viewing gallery overlooking the city. Nestled away to the right is the castle grounds and, beyond that, the lovely Nam River. Other than that I think this is a fairly typical vista over a Korean city.

Unfortunately I left my fisheye in the car so this isn't as wide as I'd have liked. There are more mountains to the left which I'd have liked to have gotten in but 13 sets of escalators to the B4 car park is quite a treck! Anywho this was taken on my Olympus OM-D E-M5 with the kit 12-50mm: 12mm, f/3.5, ISO 200, 1/1250 sec.

- Daniel Lloyd

I took a walk around the city of Gothenburg (Sweden) this weekend, trying to find suitable views for this contest. Proved to be a lot harder than I fírst thought!
This was a good exercise since I'm not used to BW photography. Found this hotel under construction and I really like the facade of ot.

Shot with a Nikon D5000 and a Sigma 18-50 2.8 HSM lens.

- Daniel Philipson

Photo taken in New York. City hall plaza. Nikon D90 18-105mm lens, ISO 200. I was going to take pictures on the Brooklyn bridge when I remember reading an article about a frame within a frame by photographer Tom Ang. I snapped a few photos quickly as I wanted to get the bridge as a Thunder storm was approaching. Made over to the bridge and a huge bolt of lightning struck near the water. Ran all the way back in the pouring rain soaking wet.

- Dan Soucy

Oxford, England is a compact and enchanting city. This is my favorite view, taken from a park just outside the city. While Oxford's architecture is beautiful, I think it is the coupling with Nature's architecture, also full of lines and texture, that makes the shot.

Canon EOS 550D, f/8, 1/100s

- Derek Moulton

This is a quintessential Boston Landmark: the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square.

Canon T2i, f/4, ISO 100.

- Diego Jimenez

Morning in the city of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is the time to enjoy an empty-streets city
as lots of people are on vacation at Chalkidiki. Photo taken from the Seich-Sou
forest which surrounds the city, perfect for mountain-biking and other sport activities.
There are a lot of monuments, statues and other tourist attractions in the city,
but I preferred shooting the core of the city, where people live and suffer due to the
economic crisis. As one can see from this picture, concrete is everywhere, ruling
our lives. Even in a Black&White photo, the absence of green color is obvious.
Perhaps in the future we manage to change our philosophy, slow down our rythmes
and think of how we can improve our lives, spending less and doing more!

Started late Sat. night, had an interesting evening, planned on taking shots of the feast of the assumption in little italy but never made it. Took a few of public square in Cleveland, then snuck into a construction site to get a panoramic of the city, then on my way home i stopped and shot the market. Hard to choose between all the great shots I got, settled on one of my favorite places, Cleveland's historical West Side Market. Dates back to the mid 1800's, the current building with the pictured clock tower was built in 1912. Best of everything in town, freshest produce and hard to find items. Where else can you pick up some rendered duck fat, sugar cane and fresh peaches all in one place almost every day of the year, a true gem.

canon t3
18-55 kit lens @ 25mm
f/4
iso 320
1/40 shutter speed

- Dylan Davis

The shot was taken at the back of Casa da Musica (House of Music) in Oporto, famous for one of the best acoustics in the world due to its architecture and materials. The house is itself made of multiple angles, but I think this not so obvious composition, full of lines, curves, shades and textures simplified in black and white, captures the modern side of my city identity. Have a seat at the beautiful exterior cafe.

This is Tampa, or at least part of it. We've been getting a lot of attention lately as the Republican Convention is about roll into town. If you watch any of the convention on television, you'll see the standard, picturesque shots of Tampa that they air anytime something is happening here. I wanted to capture a view of the city that might go unnoticed unless you knew where to look. This shot of our famous "Beer Can" building was taken from the University Of Tampa, across the Hillsborough River from downtown. After wandering around the city early on Sunday morning, I came across this unique viewing angle that captured one of our iconic buildings as well as the palm tree lined shores of the river. This was shot with a Nikon D3100 with an 18-55mm lens set at 18mm, f/3.5, 1/1000 sec shutter and ISO 100. I used Photoshop for some contrast and exposure tweaks, and for converting it to black and white.

- Gabe Leowenberg

Shot with a nikon d70 with an 18-70mm f3.5 lens at iso 200

When I went out to shoot for this weekly contest. I looked for buildings with great lines and shadows, things that would look great when converted into black and white. But then, halfway through, i realized simply taking pictures of buildings isnt what a Manila is known for. So thats why i chose this pic to send in, Manila is a constantly developing city and its the workers and scaffoldings that embody its progress.

Georgetown, South Carolina, the third oldest city in the United States. What? You haven't heard of it? Well, I'm not surprised. Downtown Georgetown is where this photo was taken, to be precise. This may not be your modern skyline of financial buildings or grandiose skyscrapers, it's something different; a nostalgic kind of different, the kind of nostalgia America was built on. The old store fronts, the mom and pop businesses, the whimsical old-time attractions, all of it resonates with us and on that day, particularly me. This leads me to how I constructed the photograph. I had nearly ended my journey of finding that "Nostalgic" cityscape, then I approached a quaint strip of shops on Front St. I stood before the intersection of the two streets, it was the perfect angle. The angle wasn't the only perfect thing in this shot, the shadows, the clouds and the contrasting buildings made it even better. However, there was something missing. Abruptly, a Dodge Charger passed me, I pressed the shutter release as fast as I could, "Click!" I had gotten the shot just in time. Now, it was perfect.

I was in Chicago for the weekend helping my brother move. We decided to visit the city. The architecture in the city was amazing. As we headed back to Union Station to head home, I walked down the stairs and when I turned around, I saw the sun shining in through the windows. I pulled the camera up for a shot. I took quite a few pictures of the city that day but this one turned out to be my favorite.

- Jacob Samuel

Subject: Reliance Building (Chicago, IL)
Location: Southwest corner of Washington and State Streets
Taken: Mid-Day
Equipment: Canon EOS Rebel T3i DSLR, EFS 18-55mm lens
Scope of Work: Photo was taken by tilting the camera straight up the Northeast side of the Reliance Building. It was useful to have a tilting view finder making it easy to line up the lines of the building. A great building designed by Charles Atwood and John Root.

- James Almendras

I was happy to get a challenge that I get to photograph my city, Miami. I wanted to stay away from the cliche art-deco buildings at the beach so we headed downtown. It was a typical rainy summer afternoon so I had my wife drive around while I took pictures. My submission is the Met 2 building. To my surprise there was actually some action outside the building. Not sure what was happening but there's 2 guys repelling down the building, there was a number of photographers below. When I took the pick I was hanging out the passenger side of the car & a few rain drops hit the lens. I did the best I could with the limited time I have to remove spots. Since it was cloudy I had the ISO way up there & since I was in a moving vehicle I had the shutter speed very fast to avoid blur.

Canon T1i
1/400 shutter
AV 11
ISO 1600

- Javier Valencia

Turl Street is a lovely, bustling street in Oxford, England. It is home to three colleges of the University, and its narrow passage frames the typically-Oxford church tower at the end of the street – it's a great one-shot representation of the city. Of course, Oxford isn't Oxford without loads of cyclists and pedestrians, so I waited for them to come into frame. Positioning the photo diagonally seemed to be the only way to fit it all in without a wider angle lens, as the lines of the colleges and the road all draw the eyes towards the tower. The photo has a zoom blur, which gives the people in the photo a sense of motion and also brings attention to the tower in the center of the frame.

Canon 550D 18-55mm kit lens
18mm
1/32 sec
f/22
ISO-100

- Jeannie Moulton

The subject in the photo is Randolph Hall at The College Of Charleston in South Carolina.

The photo was taken with my Nikon D80 with a Tokina 11-16 mm lens. ISO was set to 100 with a 2.8 f-stop. Shutter was 1/2000. Photo was leveled and converted to B&W with Lightroom.

My wife and I moved to Charleston, SC about 4 months ago from Myrtle Beach, SC. Moving to a proper city have been wonderful for me and my camera. Charleston is full of history and life. I go out just about every Saturday and explore my new city. I will likely be attending classes at The College of Charleston for computer science and so I wanted to take this week to explore the campus some. I was not let down. They have some truly amazing history preserved there as one of America's oldest cities. (1670 it was founded and called Charles Town)

Traveled to Pittsburgh for a quick weekend trip and ventured to Mount Washington to catch a quick cityscape photo. I cropped, desaturated, and played with the curves in Lightroom a bit.

- Jeff Gamble

I was in Shanghai on business and had a couple "dwell" days between projects, so I roamed Shanghai with an ultra-wide angle lens taking street photos. This photo is of the famous TV Tower in the Pudong section of Shanghai. There's an elevated circular sidewalk that allows pedestrians to circumnavigate the adjacent intersection. I lined-up the tower so it was framed by the bottom of the sidewalk. The fisheye lens amplified the effect of the circular half-frame. I like to shoot architecture in black and white because it has a more graphic look.

It was nearly 100 degrees in the shade that day and I was dripping sweat all over my camera. I was lucky I didn't drip on the lens and ruin the shot.

This photo was taken with a Minolta Maxxum 7D using an AF 17-35 Minolta lens, ISO of 100, tripod and remote shutter release. The image is HDR, edited in Photomatix and Photoshop. The location was on Lady Bird Lake Trail between S. 1st and Congress Ave, Austin Texas. While getting ready to take this photo my friend and I encountered an angry homeless man that would walk back and forth along on the sidewalk occasionally yelling at us. This made setting up and shooting a rather quick process, but when he stopped to urinate no more then a few feet from us we knew it was time to move on.

- John Dennis

The 1920s-era Mark Hopkins Hotel looms over the peak of San Francisco's tony Nob Hill, an enduring symbol of money and power - albeit one that actually replaced another symbol of money and power, i.e., the original Mark Hopkins mansion, which was built for the titular railroad tycoon in 1878, then burned to the ground by the infamous earthquake of 1906. Of course, this being San Francisco, a few wisps of encroaching fog linger in the background to remind you that the sun can't shine everyday, not even in California.

This photo was taken with a Panasonic Lumix FZ-40 with the in-camera color effect set to B/W. The f-stop was set at 3.6 and the exposure time was 1/1300. A bit of brightness/contrast boosting was then done later in Photoshop.

- John Graham

My submission is a photo of the bell tower in Balboa Park in San Diego, CA. I was walking around at dusk when I made the photo.

i've just moved to baltimore & am surprised by the lovely boardwalk that connects along the waterfront. baltimore has such a terrible reputation & the wire really did nothing for it - there are some lovely neighbourhoods & the people here are so warm & friendly - it's really quite lovely. however, black & white image of baltimore really does play into the stereotype. this was taken with my iphone using the hipstamatic app.